The Blossoming of a New Friendship
by TheStagAndTheDoe78
Summary: Lily is avoiding Snape during the summer holidays, but finds herself in the company of a certain James Potter that she realises she doesn't hate. (I know, the summary is quite bad. But just give it a shot?)


5 o'clock, her watch read. She would have to go home soon, otherwise her mother might get worried about why she wasn't home for dinner. Plus it would be quite a walk back home, as she decided to go to the playground far away from her house, from _his_ house, in hopes that _he_ wouldn't find her.

Ever since Lily came back home, it wasn't uncommon for her to wander into parts of Spinner's End she's never been before, but how could she not? She needed to find places that Sev— _Snape_ , she hastily corrected herself, wouldn't expect her to go.

After the fight She'd been crying over the death of her friendship between Severus(No, no, _no!_ Snape, _not_ Severus!) and herself. And just as her tears were slowly starting to stop, she found out that he was camping outside the Gryffindor Tower harassing the other students, especially the first years, into giving him the password. After repeating the words "you will not cry, and you will not forgive him like the other times" in her head like a mantra, she went down to see him. Of course, he started to apologise,making excuses for himself, going on about how it _slipped_ and that he didn't _mean_ to call her that. Merlin knows how her fast her grief morphed into anger on hearing his excuses.

Just because he didn't mean to say that to her doesn't change the fact that he was _thinking_ it. That he's been thinking it for a while. He calls everyone of her birth that. How was she different? And she had no qualms telling that to his face, so she did. Promising that she will hex him into oblivion if he did not leave in the next ten seconds, Lily stormed back into the Gryffindor common room. She at least felt a tiny bit better watching him flinch and squirm.

She had done well in avoiding him for the rest of the term, sure he had managed to corner her in the library and during potions (Professor Slughorn seemed oblivious to the fact that she did not want anything to do with the slimy git and continued to partner the two of them up when they were brewing potions) a few times, but still she had done pretty well.

After term ended, as surprising as this may be, it wasn't as easy. She thought he had finally gotten it through his head that there was no chance of saving their friendship (like there really even was a friendship for a long time, he'd been avoiding her for weeks before the incident) when they were on the Hogwarts Express and he didn't try to look for her, but she was apparently wrong. He started coming to her house everyday after the day they got back, even trying to threaten Tuney and her friends into letting him in, which only made things worse. Petunia shouted at her, saying that it was her fault that her freak friend made her friends scared to even set foot in a ten metre radius from the house. And as the days went by, she grew more angry with him as he came back, apologising and apologising. Sure she still cried at night at the loss of one of her best friends, but she started to get this overwhelming sense of anger and hatred at the sight of her once best friend.

She almost exploded from anger when he decided to change his tactics by pushing all the blame to Potter.

Potter.

 _Potter._

She managed to convince herself for a few weeks that it really _was_ all Potter's fault. But hearing those words come out of Se— Snape's mouth, it really made her doubt her judgement. After all, while it was completely immature and utterly idiotic of him (she didn't think he was an annoying, bullying and arrogant toe-rag for nothing, mind you) to bully her best— _ex-_ best friend that way, it wasn't his fault that Snape said what he did. And a part of her knew that even before the term ended.

It didn't stop her from avoiding Potter though. Sure she wasn't exactly _mad_ at him, but her wounded pride could not bear the thought of enduring Potter's constant jibes about how he's been telling her that her friendship with, as he called Snape, _Snivellus_ was toxic for months. So the fifth year avoided him too, and while she would deny this for the rest of her life, her friends would have no issues in admitting that their friend would positively break into a sprint in the opposite direction the very second she saw the messy-haired Gryffindor chaser.

But, there was no way she could avoid him, or Snape, once she went back to Hogwarts after the holidays. She's just going to have to listen to Potter's words and try to move past the humiliation with as much dignity as she can manage, not forgetting to slap him right on his face the minute he asks her out to wipe off the annoying smirk on his face.

She looked up at the sky. There were brilliant shades of yellow and orange stained on it as the sun set. The water from a nearby river was glistening under the sun's rays, the strong winds were blowing on the leaves of surrounding trees, quite a number of said leaves falling off the trees and flowing in the wind. There was a faint smell of roast chicken and mashed potatoes in the air and she licked her lips in temptation. It was so easy to get lost in her surroundings. It was very peaceful, she should come here more often…

"Fancy seeing you here, Evans."

Lily jumped from her seat on the swing in shock. She turned to see who the invader of her privacy was and saw (Merlin, why?) none other than James-frigging-Potter seated on the swing next to the one she was seated on with his trade-mark infuriating smirk.

"For Godric's sake Potter, have you been _stalking_ me?" she fumed.

The smirk flew off his face after hearing her say that.

"Well n-no, but a-actually yes… in a sense..."

Lily's eyebrows shot up past her hairline, and she got ready to start yelling at the prat for being such a creep (in a quite _illegal_ manner as well). But she was cut off by him.

"Well, you see," he started off a bit stronger this time, "I really wanted to apolo-apologise.I've never really done something like that before, by the way, so I might have some trouble getting the words out. Anyways, I managed to coax your address out of Marley, and a disillusionment charm and a thirty minute broom ride later, I reached your house. Then, when I finally got the guts to ring the doorbell, your mother answered the door and said you weren't home. So I decided to just look around the place and see if I could find you before leaving here. And now here we are?" He stopped with a sheepish expression.

Lily gave him a half-hearted glare. For some reason unbeknownst to her, she couldn't bring herself to be angry with Potter, so she nodded curtly and sat back down on the swing, before rocking herself back and forth.

"Okay. You've found me, you've apologised. Now can you _please_ leave? I would really like some alone time."

"No can do, Evans. I can only leave when you forgive me." Lily could practically hear his smirk in his voice.

She stopped swinging. "Fine. I forgive you. Now scram."

"Uh-uh. Only when you actually mean it."

Lily let out an exasperated sigh. Maybe she could just pretend he wasn't here. She started to swing again.

James glanced at her out of the corner of his eye and smirked to himself, before pushing himself on the swing with a momentum slightly greater than Lily's.

Lily, noticing that James was swinging a bit higher than her, started to increase her pushing force as well.

Then James started swinging a bit higher than her.

Then she did.

Then he.

Then she.

He.

She.

"Merlin help me, are you trying to _compete_ with me, Potter?" She asked incredulously.

James only laughed and pushed even higher.

And Lily didn't know if it was because she was tired, or if it was because she was starting to feel dizzy from all the swinging, but she started laughing as well. It felt great to laugh again, she hadn't done that, at least genuinely, in a while now.

They laughed and laughed, and Lily was sure she was extremely late to go back home for dinner, but she couldn't care less. She had started to realise, that when he wasn't hexing someone for fun or asking her out, James Potter (yes the very one she liked to call an egoistic prat) was not bad company.

They slowly came to a stop on the swings, and soon after, the laughter died away as well, leaving them in a comfortable silence.

"Hey, Evans? I hope you know that I really _am_ sorry. I never understood why you were friends with Snive—Snape in the first place, but you were. And I know that while it isn't _completely_ my fault that you and Snape aren't friends anymore, I'm still responsible for some of it. If I had known when things were getting out of hand, none of this would have happened, so I'm sorry. But I am also sorry that I don't feel bad that he called you what he did. It's a bad word, yes. I would have killed him for saying that to you if it didn't mean you getting so upset, yes. But, you wouldn't have ended your friendship with him if he didn't say that. And as much as you would like to ignore it, you know what kind of people he's been hanging around with lately. You know what he wants to be, and you know why he has been very hesitant to be around you lately. He doesn't deserve your friendship, and you don't deserve the consequences of being his friend either. He's been absolutely horrid to you, trying to control your life in every which way. So while I _am_ sorry about being partly the cause of the end of your friendship with him, I'm never going to be sorry that it did."

James braced himself as he waited for Lily to stand up and start shouting at him for being so insensitive about the whole situation, but she never did. She just stared in front of her, looking at nothing in particular, just lost in thought.

"You don't have to apologise, Potter." As much as Lily wanted to say this was all his fault as usual, she had to face the facts. Snape had been expressing interest in the Dark Arts for quite a while now, and her original wish to steer him back in the right direction was never going to be realised, especially not now. And she was starting to think that she had known that all along. She just continued to stand up for him in hopes that she could still keep this foolish dream alive. There was no point in doing that now. It was clearer to her than it had ever been before. Snape had chosen his way and she had chosen hers. There was no way she could change that. The best thing for her to do now was to forget him. Forget that she was best friends with one Severus Snape and move on with her life. She turns to James and prepares to go into the longest speech of her life.

"I think I would never have been able to escape from our friendship if it weren't for you. If it weren't for you, I probably would have still tried to pass Snape off as a misunderstood teenage boy who just required a bit of guidance to put him back in his place. But he isn't. I think I have always known that. Sev knew what he was doing, he knows what he _is_ doing. He knows what he aspires to be, and how I would be jeopardising that by being his friend. I think I would have to have suffered much more if I hadn't ended my friendship with him now. Even though you may be a pompous prat who only plays immature pranks on people for them to suffer humiliation beyond compare, for once, your, albeit very immoral, talent has done something to help someone. So… Thank you for that."

Lily reckons she has never seen a more surprised look on James' face, but she doesn't say anything about it. Instead, she blushes and looks down at her feet as James stares at her for a few minutes.

He realises that she really mustn't be joking, and decides to say the only thing that can come to his mind.

"James."

It's Lily's turn to be surprised. "Huh?"

"James. I think now that you have seemed to have forgiven me, you should call me James instead of Potter. I mean, you know, if you want to." He ends off awkwardly with a cough and looks down to his feet, just like Lily had just five minutes ago.

"Okay then, P—James. I guess that also means that you'll have to start calling me Lily."

James can't seem to wipe the cheerful grin that he seemed to have developed off his face. He looks up at her and nods, before getting an idea and chuckling. He began rocking himself back and forth on his swing.

"Well then, _Lily_. I bet that you can't swing higher than me."

Lily laughed, "we'll just have to wait and see, won't we?"

They started to swing higher than they had ever swung before, and Lily doesn't mind admitting that that was the most fun she had in a long time.

And when James asked her if they could be friends soon after that, she found herself saying yes. After all, being friends with James Potter, and enjoying the roller coaster ride that came with his friendship, might just be what she needs. She doesn't know what makes her think that, but she just knows it.


End file.
